Alexa provides users with 7 different categories of information that can be used to get an idea of how their website ranks.

This information can be extremely effective when trying to determine where the strengths and weaknesses of your website lie, and how to go about fixing any weakness. However at first glance, these tools may not appear as self-explanatory as you might think, but once you understand them they can provide you the insights you require to improve your overall Alexa rank. In addition to this, these analytics can be directly compared to competitors in order to gain an idea of the areas where each website is lacking, or holds an advantage. Here is a run-down of the statistical tools that Alexa can provide;

Daily Traffic Trend: The Daily Traffic Trend does exactly what it says it will. It tells you your daily traffic and how this trends over time.

Daily Reach (%): The Daily Reach lets you know what percentage of internet users, monitored by Alexa (ie. Toolbar users) that you reach on a daily basis. Therefore a ranking of 1 means you reach 1% of all traffic reported to Alexa.

Daily Page Views (%): Daily page views are a request to load a single page off of your website.

Page Views per User: This takes the page views a step further. This tool tells you how many pages each visitor views once arriving at your page.

Bounce Rate (%): This is the amount of times that a visitor will load only a single page of your website. This is where the tools get more interesting. A high bounce rate can suggest that there are problems with your website, which need to be addressed in order to improve your standings.

Time on site (Minutes): This once again does what the name suggests; it tells you how many minutes are spent viewing your website.

Search Visits (%): This tool shows you what percentage of your visits come from search engines, once again this can help identify issues, especially if you have a high bounce rate.

What can these tell me?

Well these seven tools can be used to gauge where your websites strengths lie, and also what weaknesses need to be remedied. For example a website that receives huge amounts of traffic, but has a high bounce rate, and low minutes spent on the page suggests people are being drawn in, but does it not fulfil on the promises used to get people onto the page. Combine this with a high percentage of search visits and you get the message that your SEO is effective, but your content is letting you down, and letting your visitors escape.

So what’s next? If you can, search for your website’s statistics, and try to find where your strengths and weaknesses lie, so that you can determine where you need to make changes, and let us know how you go in the comments.

If you can’t see more than your page rank, the next post in this series will be all about improving your ranking, so this will be for you.

Call out the bullshit. This is not good marketing agency business practice.

They asked the client to complete the brief for them.

I understand that ‘cover your ass’ corporates may encourage these practices but how will this improve client retention? Or client service?

Who on earth is going to agree to that?

What a creative brief should look like

Working with CAS we pitch you an idea which should be aligned to your brand strategy and then we suggest ways we’d like to execute. You edit / approve but we do most of the thinking and the doing for you.

You are busy – you hire an agency for their expertise and experience and probably to save yourself time. Surely this could be managed more smoothly?

Call out bad practices – We got the courage to write this post because of these two influential folks below. Take a stand for good work, honest appraisals and don’t allow bollocks into your working practices.

There, we’ve said it. Weight off chest.

@DannyBrown says “When I realized this, and began writing openly about bad practices and calling out bullshit, it once again raised the level of engagement through the roof, as others were clearly thinking the same thing.”

Guy Kawasaki “Unfortunately, “social media experts” cause a lot of confusion and frustration with their Fascist recommendations. It starts with their recommendation that you absolutely must first create a strategy with goals, milestones, and expected results that you can follow, step-by-step, to success. “

What is a good creative brief?

But what should be on a brief if you are producing an integrated campaign that works across platforms?

I think the brief ought to start with the problem that we’re trying to solve.

The problem, by the way, may not be an advertising problem. It’s what kind of problem are we trying to solve that would make our brand of more value to this consumer?

I think the second thing it has to address is the use of media, technology, content, and community by the users, customers, or target audience or community members. Thinking about how somebody interacts with stuff beyond just the brand and the category is really important. I would actually go so far as to have every brief basically say, “You can’t solve this problem with an ad. You have to solve this problem with an idea that isn’t an ad.”

Then you get to invent this idea or creative that might be worth advertising, right? I think another way to look at it is to really figure out the problem behind the problem. The problem can’t be, “Oh, we want know about this product.” The problem might be, “Well, what problem do these people actually have that we could solve?” And maybe solving it and actually doing something of value in the world of social media, etc., might be the reason that gets them to pay attention to us and might turn them on to the product we want them to know about. That’s almost coming at it from an extreme perspective in order to fight the inclination to solve problems with a TV commercial.

Broadening the reach of marketing

How do you deal with people who aren’t interested in learning more beyond their narrow specialization? When a TV advert is the ONLY soution; or social media or direct mail? Agencies need to be able to work across media platforms, to be collaborative and not stand on their high horse of ‘expertise’ when client brands ask them to work with other agencies on the account.

Nobody, but nobody is a leading edge specialist in everything nowadays.

Boches again

Here’s the downside of that. If you’re not aware of the capabilities of technology and APIs and certain platforms, you may never think up the idea to begin with.

So how will advertising change?

Many of these things are in some ways like the antithesis to how advertising works, where we make our stuff so precious and we want it to be perfect and magnificently designed, and then we’ve got to produce it and then we put it out into the marketplace. That long, linear process might lead to something that’s gorgeous and finished, but it’s not always the best. In a world where things change daily and things are disposable more quickly, it’s not always the best way to do things. I think we’re going to see more convergence among and between marketing, advertising, and software and gaming-type companies over the next five years.

What next?

If you’re an agency – take a look at how you take briefs from clients.

If you’re a brand – don’t stand for any nonsense, if you want to brief the old way – carry on. If you want a collaborative business partner who will work WITH you to help solve marketing problems, change your suppliers until you find one who CAN do what you need and work the way you prefer.

It includes a request for twitter id – first time I’ve seen that on an email newsletter sign up form. Interesting that they choose to put it so high up – under your name – the second field to complete.

I just bought a pen, a beautiful pen and shared my email address with the supplier – top luxury brand, Mont Blanc.

A week later I got an email, beautifully crafted but inappropriate message. This is not the way to say hello and welcome to your new customers. Launching right in with a sales message…. How about a welcome, a short autoresponder about the brand and explanation setting out expectations for the relationship?

We’re working for a lovely creative client, Global Culture, who design t shirts and gifts with a New Zealand “kiwi humor” twist.

Global Culture NZ World Star Wars Day t shirt designs

Their designer, Russell came up with some fun Star Wars designs and we suggested promoting them around the May 4th, World Star Wars Day event. [May the Fourth Be With You – in case you didn’t get the oblique reference.]

Here’s how we did it

Create landing page on our website

Amend Facebook to include a new page header; start liking and commenting on Star Wars associated sites

Run a competition using the Wildfire app to promote winning free t shirts

Tweet a competition to win free t shirts

Set up Google Alerts for Star Wars Day and using these leads, comment on other people’s blogs and news items back to our site

http://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpg00Rebecca Caroehttp://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgRebecca Caroe2012-06-26 09:00:192012-06-21 15:22:58Online event PR - how to do it on a small budget

Former client, Ctrl-Shift, is a strategy consultancy focusing on personal data and its use online.

They realised that the landscape of personal data availability online has changed hugely in a very short time and despite hysterical outcries about Facebook privacy settings, it is an important area that both brands and consumers should be knowledgable about.

Their concept of “personal data stores” is a really interesting concept that is being built out – imagine you, the consumer, setting the ‘terms and conditions’ for a brand to access your personal information?

But see their great Personal Data infographic published in full with a brief snapshot below showing the 2012 situation…it describes the landscape for legislation, technology, entrepreneurs, corporates and consumers and looks forward in scenarios for each to 2017.

Ctrl-Shift the Personal Data Landscape future

http://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpg00Rebecca Caroehttp://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgRebecca Caroe2012-05-22 19:16:242012-05-22 19:16:24Infographics used for business development

Rob Lane my colleague recently wrote a first draft of a new proposal for a client brand and I was delighted that he chose to insert a new section header,

“Your responsibilities”.

Imagine an agency telling a prospective client – not one we’re working with already – that they had to actively participate in delivering to make the marketing programme effective?

I love it.

Now I’m recommending we put this into all new client proposals. It’s authentic and transparent and gives the brand clear boundaries and guidelines that will help us give them exactly what they hired us to do.

What do you do in order to improve your client briefing and agreements?